On 24 October the plenary Joint Ministerial Committee [JMC (P)] of UK, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland leaders met for the first time in two years. The occasion for resurrecting what had become an almost moribund body was to discuss the ‘UK approach’ to Brexit promised by the Prime Minister. The outcome was to set up another joint committee on Brexit to be known as JMC (EN), chaired by David Davis. The devolveds have also been promised a direct line to the Brexit Secretary.

If Westminster were to assert the view that Brexit falls under foreign affairs and is therefore a reserved matter, the devolved territories would have little legal recourse but, says Michael Keating, doing would re-open the whole question of the nature of the union.

Summary: This document explains how Northern Ireland and Scotland should and could stay within the European Union while remaining inside the United Kingdom; why this proposal need not prevent and may in fact facilitate England and Wales in leaving the EU; and why this compromise proposal is in accordance with the respective preferences of the peoples of the two Unions within the UK who voted in the advisory referendum held on June 23 2016.

In the first of our new blog series, Politics in a Changing Spain, Dr Robert Liñeira (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) looks at the recent parliamentary election and its implications for the future of Spanish politics.

In their contribution to our majority nationalism series, Antoine Bilodeau of Concordia University and Luc Turgeon of the University of Ottawa share the result of their survey which compares the way in which Quebecers and Canadians construct community boundaries.